Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 506(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 506(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
“So? What do you think?” the realtor asks. She’s an attractive woman in her mid-thirties with curly hair and a face that looks kind of like a porcelain doll’s. Like Elizabeth Bennet on that cover of Pride and Prejudice I discovered as a kid. Natural though, not because of a ton of plastic surgery. Or, if it is, it’s really good. But, based on the Porsche she has parked outside and the Hermès Birkin bag she has on the table next to the sign-in sheet, she could afford really good cosmetic surgery. The real estate business must be going very well for her.
Her name is Evelyn. (Pronounced EVE-lynn. She enunciated it very clearly.)
“It’s nice,” I say, looking around the kitchen at the soapstone countertops, the Sub-Zero fridge, and the eight-burner Viking range.
“The appliances are all brand new.”
“Sweet,” I say, glancing over at Britney, who nods a Yeah, that’s cool.
I’m learning about things that matter when buying a house. Things I never knew to ask. Things like, “How old is the roof?” And, because it’s LA, “Has the foundation been inspected and/or retrofitted?” Stuff like that.
It’s not a serious search just yet. I’m still just being a looky-loo and going to open houses to get a feel for what my options are when the money from my newly robust sales starts coming in. Filling the Gap (both versions) went live a few days ago and…
… Well, it kind of went like this:
When I first uploaded my book into the Nile Store, it was barely findable. Like, honestly, it was buried so deep in the maze of authors skreiching to get their books noticed that it might as well have just been still sitting on my computer. But then the Lesperia video happened and…
Suddenly, almost like an enchantment had been cast, my ranking jumped into the top five thousand.
And I squeed. Literally. I looked at my computer screen and went, “Squeeee!” Sheila shouted out of her bedroom window to make sure I hadn’t seen a mouse or something.
Then it climbed into the top one thousand. And I started vibrating. I might have levitated. I’m still not sure. I called Britney to come over and she did, and we just kept hitting refresh on my computer and drinking from a box of wine.
When we saw it climb to the top five hundred, I stopped breathing. No, seriously. I only realized it when I had to gasp for breath like I had just been rescued from a surfing accident. Just big, giant gulps of air. Which turned into hyperventilation when Filling the Gap cracked the top one hundred.
By that point, it had turned into an actual sporting event. Like the World Cup or something. We stayed up for, I dunno, two days just hitting refresh, drinking boxed wine, and watching my ranking climb. It was surreal. Occasionally I’d take a bite of the tacos we had delivered. The delivery kid saw the way we were acting and actually said, “Is there a game on?”
What happened after I entered the upper-upper echelons is, honestly, a little bit hazy. Because I think I passed out a few times.
Ninety…
Seventy-five…
Sixty…
Fifty!
Forty…
Thirty…
Twenty-five…
Twenty-five…
Twenty-five…
It kind of hung there for a while. Like maybe people had stopped ordering it? And, honestly, if it had all just stopped there, that would have been fine. I had already exceeded my wildest dreams for what might be possible. But then it started climbing again.
Fifteen…
Fourteen…
Twelve…
(It just jumped thirteen altogether. Which I took as a good omen.)
Eleven…
Ten.
Holy shit, I thought. I’m about to be in the top ten bestselling books in the world. What the actual flim-flam?
And it kept going, stepping over every other book in line. Leaping over huge names like Audrey Saint and SS until it hit ... number ... one.
I think I must have looked like one of those old, old cartoons where a wolf or something sees a pretty girl wolf and his eyes bug out of his head and he goes ‘AAA-OOO-GAA!’
Yeah, that was me.
I almost went catatonic. All my internal systems just kind of shut down. Somewhere in the far distance I could hear Britney shouting, but it sounded muted and hard to make sense of.
And then my phone started blowing up, the ding-ding-ding bringing me back to the here and now. It was all these authors, many of whom I’ve never even met, sending me congratulations on my socials and everywhere.
And then the weirdest thing happened, as if it wasn’t already weird enough.
Gregory, the Aria’s SparkleNight DreamWeaver’s WishMaker app… guy… thing, popped up. Just popped right up on my phone.
“Congratulations, Cordelia Sarantopoulos, aka Cynthia Lear, on achieving the number one sales spot in the Nile Store! What an amazing accomplishment!”
The number of ways in which that freaked me out are too many to get into, but suffice to say that it woke me back up pretty quickly.